Went into a business today, on wall was a flag and a cap with quote. Made me wonder, who would think it's not great now? I always thought we were the best. Y'all seem to think we've declined somehow, I don't.

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Made me wonder, who would think it's not great now?

Well, for starters, the owner of that shop.

What is the measure of greatness? Depends on you. I know a few great guys. What makes them great in my view is mostly character. Things like integrity, fairness, can do attitude, social intelligence knowing what is worthy fight for and what not to bother with. Sense of humor is a biggee too.

In my opinion we are not great because we have politicians and citizens that do not respect each other, themselves, or the laws of this country.

We are not great because we have a population that largely accepts corruption. "Clinton foundation" for example... The population really doesn't understand how toxic that is to a society.

We have a path to citizenship, everyone on earth knows what it is, yet many of our politicians and citizens don't for some reason.... Hillary even openly used lawlessness to her advantage calling for illegals to vote.

We are not great because the petty nit wits on the hill have not been able to balance a budget in decades. They still are not able or even willing to attempt it. The numbers are terrible, and deadly toxic, but the people entrusted to manage those numbers are worse. This Democracy will end in bankruptcy and lawlessness followed by poverty and dictatorship just like pretty much all of them do. I think it will happen in our lifetime.

In my opinion this country gets a grade of C minus, maybe a D. and I am being charitable because it's a Friday.

Which countries do you owe that to and what is the possibility of them calling in that debt?

"Which countries do you owe that to "

The USA itself.....

You see....the politicians, both dems and repubs, have discovered that by buying the votes of the uninformed electorate via using the US Treasury to do so.....they can retain their offices in Congress.

Only half of the USA pays any net federal income tax...and those that don't are addicted to the "free" handouts...as if that is their God given right to mooch from the other half.

You were polite....

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On November 7, 2016, debt held by the public was $14.3 trillion or about 76% of the previous 12 months of GDP).[5][6][7][8] Intragovernmental holdings stood at $5.4 trillion, giving a combined total gross national debt of $19.8 trillion or about 106% of the previous 12 months of GDP.[7] $6.2 trillion or approximately 45% of the debt held by the public was owned by foreign investors, the largest of which were Japan and China at about $1.09 trillion for Japan and $1.06 trillion for China as of December 2016.[9]

I am not sure how the debt owned by China and other countries works, but it probably is similar to public debt, paid back with interest with a maturity date for the agreed interest rate, but can be cashed in early at a lower interest rate.

Some of it is owned by banks. The Fed tried to force feed banks offering interest free money to banks in hopes that they would loan the money out to re-inflate the bubble. What ended up happening is the banks used the money to buy treasuries to get the interest. So ultimately all that happened was the fed loaned money to the treasury and the banks get the interest. Hahahaha.

The great recession was over years ago, but the ecconomy is still on life support.

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I think Trump will continue to fix a few of the things that need to be fixed. It will continue to be ugly and noisy. He has the balls to do it, but to fix enough to keep us out of bankruptsy, and maybe make the US great is going to require someone else. Someone who sleeps at the Holiday Inn Express, instead of tweeting all night.

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I made a claim and made a case for it.

I liked the 1990's, Bill Clinton did welfare reform, he got quite a few folks off the couch and back to work. Bill made a logical tactful appeal, and got a lot of support from democrats and republicans for doing a lot more to secure our borders. They could actually discuss and balance a budget, other than Bill Clinton claiming that the internet bubble was the "New Economy",... and a few other less important things, those were OK days. Mostly I liked that liberals had not gone completely insane yet.